Most people think nothing before boarding the GO train in the Golden Horseshoe, the TTC in Toronto - for what happened in Madrid surely will not happen here. Yes, the carnage and gore jumps out from the front page of the newspapers - but it stops when the paper is thrown in the Blue Box. Wishful thinking does not make terrorism go away. It usually occurs far away from home and to people we don't know. And that is the root of the problem. Here, it inconveniences us in our foreign travels, if that.
When it is an Estonian soldier, a Finnish Honourary Consul, we think and feel far more, actually express sadness, exhibit signs of mourning. Still, we remain physically distant from the arena, the twisted wreckage of trains, the fear hovering in the air. In fact, the further from the loci of carnage we are, the more we lose sight of the fact that we are defenseless against terrorism's ultimate weapon - that of unexpected and total terror. We are not inured to air-raid sirens, prepared to dash into shelters. We are, on the other hand, easily manipulated by the media, that distracts us from the real issues. In politics, as always, calculated spins are put on almost any situation to discredit opposing stands taken.
Because it is an U.S. presidential year this means that the Bush administration is pilloried daily - the facts matter not. The financial costs, lost coalition lives are bandied about on op-ed pages. The mounting evidence of Hussein's genocidal policies is not. Mass grave upon mass grave has been unearthed, but opponents of the operation still demand to see weapons of mass destruction. Failing to see that the local mass destruction evidence is in the graves.
In both cases - Al Qaeda and Hitler - pathology was not recognized, nor averted through appeasement. Deposing the genocidal Saddam regime, bringing democracy, at the very least decent government to the heart of the Arab-Muslim world - that is, and should remain, the rationale behind Operation Freedom.
Mark Steyn, writing in The Telegraph (March 23) is emphatic about the Spanish decision in "We tried appeasement before…" Steyn has the courage to invoke the Holocaust comparison, the memorials that are found all over Europe, with the two words: "Never again". Steyn believes that these words sound fine, with the qualifier - but only when applied to the Holocaust. At this very moment in North Korea there are entire families in concentration camps, complete with gas chambers. Where is the never again? What is moral Europe doing?
Steyn cites Alain Finkielkraut, a French thinker, who suggests that the never again means, to European leaders, "Never again power politics. Never again nationalism. Never again Auschwitz." It does not say: never again genocide. Steyn points bluntly at the EU allowing hundreds of thousands of Bosnians and Croats to die on its borders. Until, yes, the Americans stepped in. Just like they did to halt Hitler's demented system. Now, the prevention of the murder of thousands upon thousands of Iraqis is in question. Steyn hammers the point home, by, like Friedman, reminding us of Chamberlain. "'Never again' has evolved to mean precisely the kind of passivity that enabled the Holocaust first time round. 'Neville again' would be a better slogan."
What would we say in Toronto or Tallinn, should we be such innocent victims, subjected to terrorist acts? That is how the whole world should think, then speak, then act.
Finally, consider what Spain's former PM Jose Maria Aznar wrote, published on the BBC news web site March 24th. Aznar, whose party was favoured to win before 3/11, the bombings swayed voters to the Socialists, said that this is no time to hand the terrorists a victory. Negotiation - so that they can go and kill elsewhere - is not the answer. Each and every democrat in the world was on those trains in Madrid - it was an attack against all of us. A cowardly attack designed with the express purpose of killing as many innocents as possible, to sow terror in our midst. To remove Spanish troops before the June handover to the UN would set a dangerous precedent. It allows the attackers to believe that they have won. allow them to move and act with impunity.
Europe's foreign ministers, unveiling "tough measures against terrorism" in a draft declaration after 3/11 are just posing. Words do not stop actions. Troops can try, troops can fight, and troops can enter Kosovo, Dachau. The EU needs to put its own house in order - laws are empty declarations. The EU moves, as the UK's Jack Straw put it, "at the pace of the slowest." Thank God for the Friedmans, Steyns, Aznars, who remind us of all the dangers of Neville again.